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A shadowy figure in a wave near children swimming at a southern California beach was caught on camera.

Discovery Channel shark expert Jeff Kurr calls it a juvenile great white shark about 10 to 12 feet long, but shark expert David Shiffman believes it was a dolphin, noted in a Facebook posting that “the tail is flat,” like a dolphin, and unlike a shark.

There are plenty of great white sharks in the southern California surf, but they pose no danger to beachgoers, according to Randy Hamilton, a shark expert with California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium. The great whites around southern California are juveniles, also known as “young of the year.” At less than 18 months old, they only eat fish, Hamilton said. When the sharks approach adulthood, they relocate to the cooler waters near San Francisco where they change their diets to mammals — sea lions and seals.